-- logo by Jin-a Yang

last updated September 28, 2011

Contents:

News of WIFP Associates

Most recent news: Kimberlie Kranich, Annette Samuels, Lydia Carey, Tatyana Mamonova, Christen Brandt, Annie Brown, Maurine H. Beasley, Jennifer Abod, Kate Swift, Michael Honey, Kathlene Mullens, Angel Navuri Mvati, Julia Beizer, Arlene Krebs, Kristin Lee, Kimberlie Kranich, Denise Bostrom, Margaret Gallagher, Jennifer Braudaway, Andrea Korte.

Websites of A few of the by WIFP Associates

A Few of the Books by WIFP Associates

News of Associates:

Kimberlie Kranich

Kimberlie Kranich is now the Interim Director of News & Public Affairs, Director of Community Engagement at WILL AM-FM-TV.

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Annette Samuels

We are sad to share that we've just been notified that Annette Samuels, WIFP Associate since 1977, died peacefully this past week with her son at her side. Funeral services will be held at one of the larger churches in Harlem. More details to come.

Annette requested that in lieu of flowers those who want to celebrate her life do so by contributing to a scholarship for journalism students. If you choose to do so now, send a check payable to the EIU Foundation to the Journalism Department, Attn. Beth Kastl, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston 61920. It will be held until we can talk with Douglas about which scholarship fund should be selected. It would be a fitting and lasting tribute if donations were sufficient to create a new scholarship in her name. If you would like to donate later, let Beth know so you can be contacted.

Annette Samuels held a master's in public administration degree from Harvard University (1989) and worked for many years as a journalist for such media as Community News Service and Tuesday, Essence, Family Circle and Mademoiselle magazines. She was press secretary in the New York governor's office, in the Carter White House, and for the mayor of Washington, DC.

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Lydia Carey

News from Associate (and former intern) Lydia Carey:

It’s been a exciting ride since the time of my internship with the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press in the summer of 2002. After leaving Washington at the end of the internship I was determined to return to college and finish my degree, spurred on by the experience of both WIFP and of living in a city like DC that is crawling with activists, movers, and shakers. I graduated in 2006 with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Latin American studies. After college I moved to Asheville, NC and began searching for an opportunity to live and work in Latin America. I was interested in working with women, immersing myself in Spanish and working to support social justice movements and the communities that struggle for rights and recognition around the world. I found that opportunity a year and a half later during the 2007 US Social Forum while participating in an environmental panel discussing the impacts of the growing biofuel industry in the southeastern United States. The opportunity was a chance encounter with a former intern for the Center for Global Justice in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

The Center where he interned was formed by a group of activists and academics to study the affects of globalization and help support economic alternatives in Mexico. The former intern explained about their work with cooperatives and community development and it seemed like what I might be looking for. I contacted the founders of the Center and shortly thereafter visited the Center and San Miguel and made the decision to move there for 6 months and see how I could make a difference in the life of the organization and the lives of those it served. Six months became 2 and a half years, most of which I ended up serving as the executive director of the organization. The Center taught me much about what on the ground work in communities was like and clarified for me many of the ideas I had about development and the ways in which NGOs function. After a short stint working as the executive director of another local organization, I decided I wanted to break out and start an independent project.

I wanted something that would allow me to use new skills and broaden the ways in which I could support the projects I was interested in. I have spent the last summer working on a new project, my own translation and editing business started with two other incredible women who live in San Miguel. Verbamate was born in May of 2011 and is already creating a buzz around town. Our hope is to use our business to bring access to information and news to people around the world and within our community, we see this as our own personal effort in the fight for social justice and therefore offer reduced rates for organizations involved in the justice struggle. I will never forget what I learned at WIFP— that media, access to it, and the transmission of ideas was vital to the social and political struggles of people around the world. I hope our work with Verbamate can support that.

In addition to this I continue to be involved in community projects and local initiatives such as our local organic farmers market and a small library project working to bring access to books to a local community and I am currently planning to study horticulture and ecological building techniques in Latin America.

To reach Lydia Carey, email: carey.lydia [at] yahoo.com.

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Tatyana Mamonova

Tatyana Mamonova continued her well received seminar series for women in Russia in 2010-2011 - celebrating 30 years in the West. This July she was granted U.S. citizenship, following 31 years as a stateless person, with pro bono legal support from immigration attorney Sarah J. Pelud, based in Montreal, Canada, who practices in New York:

“It has been an honor and a joy for me to assist Tatyana Mamonova in her quest for U.S. citizenship,” said Sarah J. Pelud, Membre du Barreau de l’Etat de New York seulement. “She now joins the ranks of famous American immigrants and through her writings and conferences will continue to make tremendous contributions to the betterment of our global society, no longer as a stateless person in exile, but as a naturalized U.S. citizen.”

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Christen Brandt

Christen Brandt is the Executive Director at She's the First. She is also Freelance Editorial Assistant at Parents Magazine.

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Annie Brown

Annie Brown is now a reporter at WRIR Richmond Independent Radio and Assistant Editor (Global Desk) at Microfinance Focus. She is also a contributing writer for the Health Section at Edge Magazine in Boston.

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Dr Maurine H. Beasley

Maurine Beasley has another great book out! Eleanor Roosevelt, Transformative First Lady is an impressive account of Eleanor Roosevelt's lengthy years in the White House. The book also includes years before and afterwards when Roosevelt made contributions to the life of the country. See the review of her book in the Summer 2011 issue of Voices for Media Democracy: http://wifp.org/Voices.2011.3.pdf

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Dr. Jennifer Abod

Jennifer Abod is an independent documentary producer, editor and director at Profile Productions. Profile Productions was established in the mid 1980s to create media programs (audio and video) featuring feminist activists and cultural workers, particularly women of color and lesbians influencing a broad constituency.

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Kate Swift

We are sad to hear the news that Kate Swift, co-author (with Casey Miller) of Handbook of Nonsexist Writing, died at age 87.

News from Veteran Feminists of America:

At 5:40 AM on Saturday, May 7, 2011, we lost an early pioneer in the Women's Movement, a Feminist Veteran, an author/editor, photographer, mentor and friend. Barbara 'Kate' Swift of East Haddam, CT gently gave up her battle with cancer and left this earth much in the same way she lived - in total control, and with an unmistakable elegance.

In the early 70's, Kate worked, as per Elizabeth Isele, "to raise editorial questions that shook the foundations of standard English language usage as we had known it. What began with her "simple" copy-editing assignment, developed over a period of years into a ground-breaking essay for MS magazine, an original article for the New York Times Magazine, and consequently developed into two unique books on gender-equality in language."

Kate and her partner Casey Miller quietly worked out of view of the nay-sayers, raising issues that needed to be addressed about how our language shaped culture and how culture shaped language -- both to the oppression and abasement of women. Kate and Casey questioned the sexist nature of accepted English usage; and their work was - and still is - something that has altered our complacent perception of language as it has harbored the 'continual humiliation of half of the world.' (New York Times Book Review, Sunday, July 4th, 1976)

NO SWIFT JOURNEY
to Kate, with love from Gina Walsh (granddaughter)

Two weeks ago
today
we brought you in to die.
Definite, unwavering, non-apologetic,
you wanted what you wanted
and didn't take 'no' for an answer.

You had a time-frame in your mind,
a reason for your decision -
it was so much like all of the previous ones
in your life: the decisions
of who you were,
what was right and fair,
whom you believed in and championed,
the people you loved, and
those you didn't.

This time you're fighting
for what you want and deserve,
but the battle is bigger and longer
than you
had imagined.

Two weeks ago
today
we brought you in
and have watched
as you've slowly slipped away
in your uninterrupted journey
toward forever.

Whether striding along Main Street in East Haddam, captaining her skiff Daisy on the Kennebec, riding the bus down to Washington to march and fight for women's rights, or sharing martini's on her porch at Eastward, Kate had the undeniably open and loving, affirming and sensible demeanor of one who was fully at peace with herself - an enviable mien, at any age, position or sex.

Thank you Kate, for your friendship and love and the times we spent together.The world is a poorer place without you.

Contact: Gina Walsh, East Haddam, CT -- ginawalsh [at] gmail.com

Link to the NYT article: "Kate Swift, Writer Who Rooted Out Sexism in Language, Dies at 87" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/education/10swift.html

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Dr. Michael Honey

Michael Honey's new book "All Labor Has Dignity" is now available from Beacon Press.

See our review of this book in the Summer 2011 issue of Voices for Media Democracy: http://wifp.org/Voices.2011.3.pdf

All Labor Has Dignity brings together 16 of King’s speeches on economic justice, many of them buried in the King archives until now. Mike edited the speeches and wrote an introductory essay for the book. The CD that comes with the book contains King’s speech to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union District 65 in 1962, when he talked of racism, poverty and war; it also contains his March 1968 speech in Memphis. For more on the book, see the WIFP Associate Books page: http://wifp.org/AssociateBooks.html

Mike’s other books are Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (1993); Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle (1999); and Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign (2007).

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Kathlene Mullens

Kathlene Mullens is an HR expert (MLHR, SPHR) who is striking out from Corporate America to start her own company to change the world for the better by empowering women (and anyone else) to "vote with their dollars" for companies/brands/organizations that have an exceptional percentage of women in top leadership roles. Look for the Female Equality Matters™ logo when you shop or donate to ensure that your purchases/donations support entities that value women not only for our power as consumers, but our value as talent! For more information, please visit www.FemaleEqualityMatters.com. To reach Kathlene, please email FemaleEquality [at] gmail.com. You can see her blog at http://femaleequalitymatters.com/blog/.

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Angel Navuri Mvati

Angel Navuri is a journalist in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with IPP Media under the daily newspaper The Guardian. IPP Media is the largest media company in Tanzania. She works as a reporter for the Guardian Daily Newspaper, and columnist for the newspaper known as The Guardian on Sunday.

Her blog is Media and Gender (www.mediaender.blogspot.com/) where she describes the conditions of women and girls, as well as discussing other issues. Angel Navuri has investigated early pregnancy in Tanzania with the Women Dignity Organization and the culture that impedes the progress of family planning in Tanzania.

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Julia Beizer

Julia Beizer is Senior Producer at The Washington Post.

Arlene Krebs

Arlene Krebs is the Director of Wireless Education & Technology Center, California State University, Monterey Bay.

Kristin Lee

Kristin Lee is Communications Director at House Rules Committee, Washington, DC.

Kimberlie Kranich

Kimberlie Kranich is the Director of Community Engagement at WILL AM-FM-TV and Co-Director of the Youth Media Workshop, WILL AM-FM-TV.

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Denise Bostrom

Denise Bostrom is Screenwriting Lecturer at San Francisco State University.

Margaret Gallagher

Margaret Gallagher is an Independent Research Professional in the UK.

Jennifer Braudaway

Jennifer Braudaway is Marketing Associate at Rand Media Group.

Andrea Korte

Andrea Korte is Editorial Specialist at Nuclear Energy Institute.

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